Japanese master of the macabre Kiyoshi Kurosawa brings his incantatory gift for creeping dread to the small screen with this sinuous miniseries. An eerie, pungently atmospheric interrogation of historical trauma, Penance is a devastating psychological thriller that ratchets up tension from the jump.

With the stories of the witnesses told, it’s time for vengeful matriarch Asako to take the spotlight in this chilling concluding episode. As Yusuki Hayashi’s haunting score swells, long-buried truths are forced into the open, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa reveals the unthinkable cost of emotional closure.

Dark family secrets come to the fore in Episode 3, the most powerful yet of Penance’s purgatorial ruminations on pent-up grief. With a fierce lead in Sakura Ando (Shoplifters), Brother and Sister Bear is a heartbreaking examination of psychological palliation in the face of irremediable anguish.

The specter of male violence hangs heavy over this second episode, which zeroes in on another of the young witnesses to the terrible inciting incident. For Maki, fifteen years of guilt and shame have curdled into repressed rage, which soon explodes in a morally questionable bid for redemption.

Penance takes a mordantly playful turn with Episode 4, in which sibling rivalry is taken to vindictive extremes. Stringing a tightrope between comedy and tragedy, Kurosawa shows off his tonal dexterity with a wickedly funny change of pace from the preceding explorations of bottled-up gloom.